


A Hand Guide to Picking Up and Taking Care of Your Hitchhiker

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1707959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long-time friends Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz are finally using their ridiculously large number of cumulative vacation days to go on the road trip to the Crater Rock Museum in Oregon that they’ve had planned since they were teenagers. They agreed not to take any unnecessary risks but, when a hitchhiker they drove past catches up to them at a gas station and saves them from a man with a knife, Simmons decides that the least they can do is give this stranger a ride. He's not much of a conversationalist but they learn that his name is Grant Ward and when they ask where he’s headed, he tells them simply, “somewhere else”. He doesn’t have much money for food or gas or places to sleep but he did save their lives, so, for awhile, they figure that’s enough.</p><p>As they travel--making stops at odd roadside attractions along the way--Ward begins to drop vague hints about a past that he’s intent on running from and they all slowly begin to realize that something a lot better might be waiting for them at the end of the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Get Ready for The Time of Your Life

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a canon-divergent AU where Grant, after the trials and rehabilitation, is allowed to leave on a road trip of self-discovery but then I realized that was bonkers, so I came up with this instead (which isn't any less bonkers, really). At first I wasn't going to actually attempt to write it but then I figured: why not? It'll either go really well or it'll crash and burn horribly. And here we are. I'll be real honest with you guys, it was difficult to figure out how to place these characters in a world where there are no superheroes and no S.H.I.E.L.D. and still have them remain characters you could recognize, since so much about who they are revolves around where they work and where they came from before that but, hopefully, I managed to work it out well enough that you still know who they are. This was supposed to be gen but lol obviously it didn't end up quite like that. Either way, I definitely feel this could be read as a more pre-relationship type fic than anything else.
> 
> The Crater Rock Museum and all of the roadside attractions they visit in each state (as well as all the towns and cities mentioned) are real places (I did my best to describe the attractions as accurately as possible based on what I read about them from descriptions and saw in photographs) and I tried to pick places that Fitz and Simmons would actually be interested in seeing but were also free (for the most part). I've read this over more times than I can count to fix mistakes but if I missed anything, I'm sure I'll find it later.
> 
> Thanks: to my tumblr followers for listening to me complain about this since I started this thing, especially [brienne-the-blue](http://brienne-the-blue.tumblr.com) who told me not to give up even when I said that I had (and I'm glad I actually listened to you for once), to Radical Face for being the perfect soundtrack while I wrote, and to the website [roadsideamerica.com](http://www.roadsideamerica.com) because I never would have found all of these delightfully strange places without it.

“You're absolutely bananas, Simmons.”

Fitz is standing in Simmons' bedroom, the pale curtains pulled open just a bit to let in enough light to see by, just enough that it doesn't bother the biological specimens that she kept in glass cases and tubes and bottles but none of that is new to him; he's seen it all before (and so much worse). What he's focused on this time, what's causing him to throw his hands up in the air like his father did when he couldn't find the words for how miffed he was (a gesture he swore he'd never inherit yet here he was, tossing his arms about) is the piles of clothes—some his, some hers—and bits and pieces that didn't include the necessary toiletries that were stacked on top of her mattress, the biggest bags she could dig out of her closet (which, really, were hardly big enough) clutched in her small hands.

“It didn't seem like this much when I was picking it all out. It'll be fine. I'm very good at packing. Do you remember when we went off to graduate school?”

“I remember having to sit like a frightened Armadillidiidae in the back while you were comfortable in the front seat.”

“Oh, come on,” Simmons says, smiling just a bit and moving from the corner near her cluttered desk to stand closer to her friend and she waves a hand at the mess. “It's not that bad! And it'll just be the two of us now. Plenty of room. Plenty of trunk space.” She hands him one of the bags and then begins shoving her own things in the one she still held onto but Fitz remains unmoved, still staring, still standing until he catches one of Simmons' patented Oh Honestly, Fitz looks and sighs, shaking his bag to widen the opening. He picks up the top shirt, inspecting it, and did the same with each article of clothing he came upon next as the pile lessened. He wonders how she could know exactly what he'd want to bring but they'd known each other for long enough that he could probably have done the same with her and been (mostly) correct in his choices.

“Speaking of trunk space...” Fitz says after a few minutes of silence as he pushes tightly rolled underwear into whatever crevice he could find that would still leave just enough room for his toothbrush. Simmons brushes a thick piece of hair behind her ear and leans an elbow down onto a pink shirt at the top of her aggregate of clothes.

“I know it's not ideal or pretty but it's our best option. Your car is far too small and nobody will let me borrow theirs.” Simmons heaves a sigh and Fitz grimaces, the image of the twenty-two-year-old silver Subaru sitting, clunky and box-like, on the street, rust on the edges of the door and a radio that still accepted cassette tapes as a form of enjoying entertainment. There was a worn and dirty ball that he figured must have been bright yellow at some point with a generic smiley face attached the antenna that Simmons claimed had come with the vehicle and was impossible to remove. It was the only car that Simmons could afford at the time a couple years ago and, while it was decent enough to get them to and from work every day, it had definitely not been battle tested for longer rides. Ever since they had agreed on taking this trip, Fitz had nightmare-ish daydreams of it breaking down in the middle of the road and being crushed by a truck or, perhaps, being stranded without cell service or a gas station for miles. He'd considered telling Simmons about his concerns but knew she'd most likely tell him he was being silly and go through a list of possibly worse scenarios they could encounter that didn't involve the car at all and, as comforting as it could be, he didn't really want to hear it.

The trip in question that they were currently packing for was something that they had been planning in the backs of notebooks since they were of an age that was far too old for them to be sitting by themselves at a table, looking through the online brochure for their destination as they calculated how much it would cost and how long it would take to get there. Going from one coast to the other had come first, the Crater Rock Museum in Central Point, Oregon had come second, discovered as they had done a search on scientific landmarks and institutions that weren't as widely known, because where was the fun in going somewhere millions of people have gone before? It promised that it housed “the finest displays of rocks, minerals and gems on the West Coast” and, despite the fact that geology had never been either of their areas of expertise, it sounded as good of a place as any to go (besides, who doesn't like looking at shiny things that the Earth had created?). As with most plans of the kind, life got in the way and with school and then the pair of them so dedicated to their work at some bland scientific company (that wasn't entirely bland but liked to advertise themselves as such to keep people's noses out of their business), that the time never came up until the afternoon their supervisors called them into their office, one with her dark hair tied loosely atop her head, her dark suit crisp and fitted, arms crossed over her chest, the other with his his easy smiles and square shoulders and equally dark suit he seemed to own only one of in multiples (what a strange pair they were and yet, somehow, they worked so well together) and they informed them that they had enough cumulative vacation days between them to take about a month off and, since they were always together, they might as well just combine those days and get the hell out of there for awhile.

They had been making some very promising progress on their current projects and the idea of leaving them in the hands of their co-workers was devastating to consider, but the prospect of nearly a month of not having to be anywhere or do anything with a somewhat comfortable nest of savings and birthday money never spent was too tempting to completely ignore. Sitting around doing absolutely nothing was nice for a day or two but quickly grew to insurmountable heights of boring until Simmons came into the kitchen one evening with a box of old notebooks of theirs and pulled out the one they had been planning their trip in.

“The museum is still open, Fitz,” she said to him and, from that point on, it was settled. They got a friend—a girl about their age named Skye who worked on computers in the same building they did and often joined them for lunch because their cafeteria had better food—to keep an eye on their place so the landlord didn't take the opportunity to claim their apartment as a biohazard as he had been threatening to do ever since he accidentally stumbled upon Simmons' collection of bits and pieces of long since dead humans and the multi-colored bubbling of whatever Fitz had been concocting over a Bunsen Burner that afternoon.

And now here they were, hours away from leaving.

“Do you think that maybe—”

“—This is a mistake? Possibly a smidge. But it'll be good. I'm pretty sure.” Simmons triumphantly zips her bag closed and pats it as if it was a particularly good dog. Fitz struggles with his own, tugging and picking threads from a worn shirt sleeve from the metal, finally getting it shut and then realizing, last minute, that he had forgotten his toothbrush.

\- -

They leave at five in the morning, just as the sun is thinking that maybe it would be a decent time to start stretching and waking up and Fitz is miserable, not having slept well the night before, thoughts plagued with barely masked anxiety and when he meets Simmons in the kitchen, a mug of coffee already in her hands, he can see that she didn't fare much better than he did. After swinging their bags and a cooler of water and sandwiches (buffalo mozzarella, prosciutto and pesto aioli because Fitz refused to have any other and Simmons was pleased to oblige) that would last them only a couple of days before they'd have to begin purchasing whatever they could find into the trunk, a key and a note was tucked under their welcome mat for Skye, who claimed to be physically unable to awaken before at least seven in the morning and would be stopping by later to get a personal lay of the land.

Fitz had rigged the stereo to play Simmons' iPod and she had complained at first, saying that there was no way she could ever hope to sell this car back in this condition when the time came, but he knew she secretly appreciated the gesture. She knew how to make mixes on tapes because of course she did, but it was time consuming and they barely held enough music and, besides, shopping around for cassettes that played anything from some time closer to this decade was nearly impossible. He had put her in charge of coming up with the playlist for their trip, giving his input here and there, because he knew her tastes were marginally better than his own when it came to that particular area. 

The only other technology they had allowed themselves to bring—besides their phones and a GPS that Fitz affixed to a spot just on the corner of the windshield—was a single computer and there was much intense discussion over who's had the honor of accompanying them on this journey but, in the end, Fitz had won after insisting that, since they were bringing both Simmons' iPod and her vehicle, it would only be fair for him to have at least one thing that belonged to him as they drove.

They sat side-by-side now, Fitz behind the wheel, staring ahead at the street darkened by clouds, a chill from the open windows bouncing on their skin. The smiley face bobbed along with the breeze and Fitz and Simmons took in a deep breath almost simultaneously.

“Here we go,” they say together and Fitz starts the engine.

\- -

They've been on the road for two hours, the time spent keeping any possible talking points to themselves so as not to wear them out early, (although they were both sure that they'd be able to find something to discuss if they tried hard enough, even if it was as insignificant as whether or not theoretical physics is in any way better or worse then experimental physics), when they run into traffic, the kind where you only move an inch or two a minute and, no matter how much you strain and squint and tune to the horribly fuzzy channel on the radio, you have no idea what could possibly be causing this back-up.

Fifteen minutes of sitting there and Fitz is already impatient and he knows Simmons can feel it, because she's turned off the music, rolled down her window just a bit to let some air in and focus on the sounds of the other cars, the ones with bad engines and the rush of people on the other side of the barrier who were probably watching them with pity as they sailed past. There's a sign up ahead with the recognizable symbol for a gas station, numbers informing them that it's only a quarter of a mile until they'd have a nice little turn to get there and Fitz spares a glance to the fuel gauge, only to see, of course, that the needle was inching closer to an “E” instead of hovering somewhere high near the much nicer looking “F”.

“We forgot to fill the tank before we left,” Fitz moans, leaning his forehead against the steering wheel and he can see Simmons out of the corner of his eye bending sideways as best as she could while still buckled into her seatbelt and make a disapproving noise.

“We always forget something. You with your toothbrush and me with the gas. It's a good thing you noticed it now or we'd be up a very disgusting creek without an oar,” Simmons says, sitting back, folding her hands in her lap and Fitz flicks on their turn signal, knowing that it could be another hour before they encountered someone in the right lane who'd be willing to tap on the brakes and let them in.

As it turns out, it's more like exactly twenty-three minutes before a young mother with the silhouettes of bouncing children in the back of her minivan waves the pair into a small space in front of her and both Fitz and Simmons respond with waves of their own. It's progress but it certainly doesn't feel like it and Fitz is so preoccupied with shooting the sharpest of daggers that he can manage at the dashboard, as if it was this inanimate object's fault for everything that had gone wrong so far (which, really, hadn't been much, in all honesty) that he didn't notice Simmons attempting to grab his attention until the back of her hand was smacking onto his arm.

“Look at that,” she says, pointing, and he follows her finger towards the side of the road, a few feet behind their car, where a man was walking slowly along the dried grass. He was tall, dressed surprisingly casual for a man hoofing it down the highway, a leather jacket draped over him that must have been much too warm for what he was doing, a backpack slung over one shoulder. His arm was raised, just a bit, a sloppy thumb held out but he refused to look at the cars he moved next to, as if he had given up ages ago and was only doing this out of habit or instinct more than an actual desire to hitch a ride. “How sad.”

“He's catching up to us,” Fitz warned. “Don't look at him.”

“What?”

“If you make eye contact, he'll think that maybe— Look away!” Fitz whispers between clenched teeth as if the man would be able to hear him, speaking as if he were Medusa and, that any second, he'd be sitting in the car with a statue of Simmons at his side but she didn't turn fast enough and, for a brief moment, they were staring at one another. They could see how tired he was, yet he was still handsome, and Fitz had a fleeting wonder of why nobody had allowed him to even make a verbal request for a lift (but, maybe, they were like him: too many horror films and novels where hitchhikers turned out to be the worst kind of sadistic serial killer, but he can't remember if they acted that way because they were picked up or left behind). 

Simmons panics, startled, hoping maybe that he wouldn't notice her and she rolls her window back up, shaking her head and mouthing an apology, turning her head to gaze pointedly at the filthy trunk of the Jeep ahead of them. The man keeps going and they watch his back as he shuffles along and Fitz hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until he heard and felt himself noisily let it back out.

“I feel awful,” Simmons says, resting her chin in her hand, elbow propped up on her thigh.

“He'll be alright. Probably,” Fitz assures her and she gives him a look. Yeah, he didn't quite believe himself either, but it was what you're supposed to say. Besides, he was a little more concerned about them making it to the promised gas station without having to use their minimal upper-body strength to push the car the rest of the way there.

\- -

Another twenty-or-so minutes later, they're making their way through the exit. Fitz has a headache from the sour blue smoke that had been drifting from somebody else's vehicle through the cracked window he kept open and Simmons is flushed from the stale, hot air they've been sitting in for what felt like days. Leaving the traffic behind was only a momentary respite, as they both knew they'd have to go back into it eventually, although they hoped that somehow magically it would have managed to dissipate while their backs were turned.

The gas station isn't difficult to miss: a large, flat building placed in the middle of a barren lot of land, as if it were a spaceship that had crashed there many years ago and hadn't quite figured out how to leave. There wasn't much else surrounding it, if you didn't count trees, other than a few what appeared to be abandoned shops or, if they weren't, they definitely were on their way to ending up at that point. A house on a slight hill was across the street, some form of bright pink paper attached to the front door, the lawn in serious need of mowing, the roof patched together with mis-matched shingles.

A small hybrid pulls away from a pump and Fitz moves in right behind it, exhaling as he shuts off the engine and clicks away his seatbelt. He studies the warning sign plastered to a paint peeling support beam (reminding him to turn off his cell phone, to discharge any static electricity he may be holding onto, to not let children near the machine, to leave the pump in the car if a fire were to start) and he hears Simmons open her door and step out, stretching even though they had barely been sitting for any longer than they normally do during any typical work day. They're the only vehicle there for the moment and he grimaces, watching the numbers on the price ticking upwards and he's so engrossed with something for the second time that day that he nearly jumps clean out of his own skin when he hears Simmons yelp and a man yell “hey”, followed a heavy thud.

Spinning around, almost dropping the pump on his feet, he sees Simmons, hands over her mouth as she stands on the other side of the car, the man who had wandered past them almost forty minutes before a few feet away from her, breathing heavily, a knife clutched in his fist as a figure dressed in baggy clothes limps hurriedly away from the scene and down the sidewalk.

“What the hell is going on,” Fitz demands, leaving his post to walk over and stand in front of Simmons, like he figured he was supposed to and she put a reassuring hand on his back.

“It's alright, Fitz. That man was coming at me with a knife. He,” her hand darts past the side of Fitz' head, her finger pointing at the man in front of them, “stopped him.”

“Oh.” It should have been him, he thinks, standing there triumphantly after chasing off the would-be attacker but, really, through his wounded pride, he's grateful that he didn't have to turn around to see a bleeding Simmons on the dirty ground. “Thank you,” he says next, says it for the both of them and Simmons steps up beside him, not needing him as a shield and she nods in agreement.

“Sure,” the man says, shrugging and folding the knife up and shoving it awkwardly into his back pocket, like this was something he did every day, something that came natural and he can't understand why they're making such a big deal out of it. He goes, starts to walk away, but Simmons stops him and Fitz is glad she did because, otherwise, he'd have to and he feels like perhaps it would be weird for him to do it.

“Hold on.” He actually does, looks over his shoulder, face unreadable and Simmons looks like she didn't actually expect him to do what she said and is now searching for what she could possibly say next.

“You can't just toddle off like that,” Fitz prompts and Simmons nods again.

“Right. You saved me, possibly the both of us. We need to do something for you.”

“No, thanks, really. I was just—”

“I remember you,” Simmons interrupts, like she's only just realized who he was. “You're that hitchhiker. I'm sorry about before, when you walked by and I acted like a complete fool.”

“It's fine.”

“How about we give you a lift?”

“Hold on...” Fitz starts, putting a hand up, because he thought she was going to offer him one of their sandwiches or a few bills for a bus ride somewhere, not a seat in the back of their vehicle and, besides, they had made a pact before they left that they wouldn't take any unnecessary risks during the trip and this seems both unnecessary _and_ and risk. But Simmons' eyes are so bright and she's so sure of this being the best option and Fitz had never been exactly the best when it came to saying 'no' to her, even when it mattered. He could hope, at least, that the man would say it for him.

“I'm not sure you want—”

“I— _We_ really do. Don't we, Fitz?” Simmons clutches his arm, smiles at him, and Fitz weighs her disappointment and his guilt against their potential murder and decides that the former was much, much worse.

“Yes. We do.”

“Alright.” The tone of his voice was that of someone who had tried to warn them but they refused to listen, and he walks towards the car, waiting for the pair to step away to give him room to open the right side door in the back and toss his bag onto the seat. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Simmons says, giving Fitz a nudge but he doesn't say anything, instead marching back to the pump still stuffed into the gas tank, finally finishing in filling it up and paying. Simmons and their new passenger are already waiting for him inside the car and he gets in, glances at the stranger in the rearview mirror, looking next to Simmons, just to make sure she really wanted this but she was busy adjusting her seat. Taking in a breath, Fitz turned the key in the ignition and pulled out onto the road, squinting at the signs to try and find his way back onto the highway.

\- -

Miraculously, the traffic had managed to thin out considerably since they had left it. Nobody had spoken in the time between pulling away from the gas station and winding up back on the wide road in the center lane, but, now that they were here and moving forward, Simmons had turned the music back on at a lower volume, twisting in her seat to peer at the man in the back.

“Jemma Simmons,” she says, pointing to herself and then to Fitz. “Leo Fitz.”

“Grant Ward,” the man offers, picking his head up from where it had been leaning against his window.

“Where are we taking you, Grant Ward?” Fitz asks, taking his eyes off the road for only a moment, to look into the rearview mirror again but Grant doesn't meet his gaze, keeps his focus on the world passing them by instead.

“Somewhere not here.”

“Oh. I see.” Simmons frowns.

“Where are you two headed?”

“Oregon,” they say together. “Is that alright?” Simmons follows up. Did she really think that he was going to stay with them all the way to the other side of the country? Fitz considers bringing it up, but figures it'd be better to wait until their next stop where they could have a private conversation. Grant looked startled by the suggestion, as if he thought they were only going as far as somewhere like Pennsylvania or Virginia and not to the West Coast, but he said nothing about it, absently shaking his head, his fists clenching in his lap. “Well,” Simmons says after an awkward pause, “You'll just let us know, then.”

She righted herself in her seat and sighed, twisting the knob up on the volume and quietly beginning to hum along.


	2. A Flying Saucer Touches Down in a Town Called Mars

The sky is beginning to turn dark blue with smudges of clouds by the time Fitz and Simmons agree on finding somewhere to stop for the evening. They're prepared to sleep in their car if they have to, but they'd much prefer _not to_ and they're relived to see a sign with reflective lettering under the line drawing of a man laying down on a bed that appeared to be made of a piece of concrete telling them that there was place to stay up ahead. They don't plan on making a habit out of this, out of stopping at a motel every single night, but they figure that they could at least treat themselves to this for the first night and save the potential hours of nonstop driving through the night for later in their trip when Fitz feels as if he can manage it.

The place that they find isn't particularly glamorous, but the parking lot is nearly empty which means that they would be able to find a room at a decent price (although, the emptiness wasn't particularly encouraging when it came down to the chances of it being any kind of sanitary, but they didn't begin this expecting to stay at The Ritz, eating caviar and ordering over-priced films). Fitz drives into the first open spot he sees and the three of them just sit there, uncomfortable, not knowing what the next step was supposed to be. Do they go their separate ways and meet up later? Tell him this as far as they'd take him? Ask him for money? If somebody had written a hand guide to picking up and taking care of hitchhikers, neither Fitz nor Simmons had heard of it.

“So, two rooms then,” Simmons says at the exact same time as Grant says: “I'll sleep in the car.”  
There's another moment of twitchy silence and Fitz can feel Grant staring at the backs of their heads as they refuse to look at him, as if by him not seeing their expressions, he might not be able to figure out what was going through their heads. Apparently, though, their muteness was enough, because the next thing he says is:

“I won't steal it.”

“Oh no, of course not... We didn't think—” Simmons starts to retreat, as if she had openly accused him of possible theft, her hands waving, nervous laughter in her voice.

“It's alright,” Grant assures her tiredly. “I wouldn't trust me either. But I won't. I promise.”

Fitz drums his fingers on the steering wheel and he and Simmons have a conversation without actually speaking.

\- -

It smells of bleach and a chemical lavender, the single bed they don't mind sharing with a mattress that sagged in the middle, the blanket coarse and patterned with garish flowers. There's a stain in the corner near the wheezing air conditioner that doesn't look like rusty water and a splash of something on the wall near the bathroom door and it's all incredibly horrible but Fitz is just fatigued enough that if he breaths through his mouth and doesn't turn too many lights on, he could handle it for a few hours.

Simmons is digging around in her stuffed bag for something more comfortable to sleep in, lining her toiletries on the bedspread, and Fitz stands near the window, pulling the splotchy curtain back just enough that he could peek out at the car.

“Remember when I said you were absolutely bananas while you were packing, Simmons? I take that back. That was far from bananas. Now, this? _This_ is absolutely bananas.” Fitz glares briefly and then turns back to his friend, who had changed when his back was turned and had her toothbrush clutched in one hand, a travel-sized toothpaste in the other. “What happened to 'no unnecessary risks?'.”

“Come on, Fitz. This is an adventure! I thought you wanted an adventure,” Simmons says, walking into the bathroom, flicking the abrasive light on, flooding the room with white light and the sound of water rushing from a tap.

“Well... yes. Who wouldn't? But I thought it was going to be, you know, just you and me. Not you and me and some guy we picked up at a gas station.”

“He seems harmless,” Simmons says, speaking around her toothbrush and a mouthful of paste. Fitz crosses his arms but the gesture is meaningless since she can't see him so he quickly uncrosses them, frustratingly unzipping his own bag to get changed and he manages to at least switch pants before Simmons comes back out of the bathroom and immediately takes a spot on the bed, yanking their computer bag onto her lap.

Fitz doesn't want to argue (not now) so he finishes what he's doing, takes over Simmons position in front of the sink and at least rinses his mouth out with mouthwash, making a mental note to stop at a store before they continued on to pick up a toothbrush of his own. When he shuffles back out, Simmons has the laptop propped on her knees, the iPod plugged into one of the USB ports.

“Updating the playlist,” Simmons explains as Fitz crawls into the bed next to her. He had planned on staying up until she finished, until he could get his own turn to check on his email, since he made the man he left in charge of his latest project send him daily updates so he could respond and tell him how wrong he was doing everything but, instead, he finds himself drifting off to the sounds of Simmons clicking and typing, making noises of approval or disagreement with whatever choices she was making.

\- -

Grant is still stretched out in the back seat—or as stretched as he could be with the limited space he had to work with—when they approach the vehicle in the morning and, before Fitz goes to return their room key to the overweight man with a peach fuzz beard who smelled like a walking pack of cigarettes that sat behind the counter, Simmons carefully opened the back door near Grant's feet and rapped on the window with her knuckles, smiling brightly when Grant jumps and opens his eyes, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Good morning! Did you sleep alright?”

“Yeah. I, uh... Yeah. Thanks.” He looks as if he had forgotten where he was and who's car he had slept in but he hastily composes himself, sitting up straighter and scratching his jaw.

“Fitz still has the key to the room,” Simmons says conspiratorially and Fitz holds it up, shakes it so it jingles. “You could use it, just for a moment. We won't tell.” She takes the key from Fitz and holds it out to Grant, shoving her hand closer when he doesn't react but, eventually, he grasps it and nods once, exiting out the other door and ambling towards the room the pair had only just left. “If the man behind the counter notices, just... do something,” Simmons orders, her voice low, once Grant has disappeared through the door, glancing not-so-subtly at the building with the glass front walls where the man in question sat.

“Do 'something'? What kind of something?”

“I don't know! You know I'm no good at improvising!”

“You were pretty good at improvising when you offered this guy a ride.”

“Adventure, Fitz! It was a moment of weakness! You didn't have to say yes! You're encouraging my behavior.”

“Oh, so now it's _my_ fault?” Sometime during their banter, Grant had finished and surprises the two of them by clearing his throat. They spin around synchronously and he might have been smiling but, if he were, it disappeared as soon as he caught their attention. His hair was damp and he was dressed in the same clothes they had found him in, his bag over his shoulder and, for a moment, he seemed like he was going to walk away. “I need the key back,” Fitz says and Grant digs it out of his pocket, tossing it underhand to Fitz who just barely catches it, relieved he hadn't made a fool out of himself (for once) in front of somebody he barely knew. He says that he'll be right back, trotting off because he doesn't want to leave Simmons alone with that guy for too long.

The man behind the counter barely pays him any mind and Fitz has to ask him about a decent place to get some breakfast at least twice before he acknowledges him and deigns to give him a response that was deep and guttural and when Fitz asks him to repeat himself, he just coughs up some phlegm.

“Does he know of a place we can eat?” Simmons inquires when Fitz returns.

“...We'll find somewhere,” Fitz says, giving them a small shiver, the sound of the man's hacking still echoing in his head.

\- -

The “somewhere” turns out to be a small diner that seemed fit to seat only fifty people at a time but, when they enter, it's practically empty and, at this point, Fitz and Simmons are beginning to wonder if maybe the apocalypse finally happened and that's why everywhere they go appeared to be practically abandoned. They still had a couple sandwiches left but they weren't exactly what anybody would consider breakfast food and were better suited for munching on at a wobbly picnic table somewhere during a break in their drive. 

They exit the car with ease, lost in a conversation about the pros and cons of biohacking, and they're half-way to the glass front door when they realize that their new companion hasn't been following them and, in fact, hasn't even left the car and they backtrack, splitting off so they stood parallel, bending down to stare at him from either side through the windows. Simmons taps on the glass and they can see Grant exhale heavily and he slides over, opening the door next to Simmons and Fitz goes to join them before anybody speaks.

“Are you not hungry?” Simmons sounds genuinely confused and Fitz admits that he, too, was slightly puzzled.

“Maybe he has food in his bag already,” Fitz suggests.

“Ah, yes. I didn't even consider that. We won't be long. You can keep sleeping if you'd like.”

“I don't have much money,” Grant says suddenly as they begin to leave and they hesitate, double-back once again, and Grant looks self-conscious, as if he hadn't wanted to tell them but the words had forced themselves out of his throat. “I can't—”

“It's alright,” Simmons starts but Fitz grabs her arm, gently enough to get her to stop talking and brings her a few feet away so they can chat without being overheard. “What are you doing?”

“I know what you were going to say—”

“Don't you always.”

“—And we don't have that kind of—”

“—Money? Honestly, Fitz, I think we can spare a few extra dollars for a plate of eggs.”

\- -

Fitz and Simmons sit side-by-side, Grant across from them, at the small table the hostess had led them to in the middle of the room. They had studied the single page menus they were handed for only a couple of minutes, using their time between ordering a round of coffee and waiting for the waitress to return to take the rest of their orders to observe Grant, who had busied himself by pretending to be fascinated by the typeface of the words on his own scratched and stained menu. 

Laughter from a family of four erupted somewhere behind them, the father slamming his hand down on the table and Grant flinches at the noise. It didn't go unnoticed but nobody mentioned it, not yet, figuring him as just the type who possibly startled easier than others.

“I don't feel comfortable with this,” Grant says finally, looking up at the pair and they sit back, straightening their clothes and their cutlery.

“Sorry,” Fitz says. “Force of habit.”

Grant frowns, lost. “What is?”

“The staring. Observing.”

“We're scientists,” Simmons adds. “Can't be helped.”

“I, uh... I meant you paying for my breakfast.”

“Oh. Oh! Right—” Simmons says.

“—That,” finishes Fitz, nervously switching the places of his knife and fork. “It's not a problem. Not much of a problem. It's fine.” He hopes it sounded convincing but he'd never been much of an actor. Multiple failed attempts at being forced to participate in school plays had taught him that. (He wasn't quite as bad as Simmons was though.)

“It's fine,” Simmons repeats, sounding more sure than Fitz had. Anything else any of them were going to say about it was cut short by the appearance of a short and already frazzled waitress, the edges of a healed burn peeking out from under the rolled up sleeves of the button-up white shirt she wore as part of her uniform. Her voice was soft when she asked if they were ready and they rattled off their orders: Fitz with his pancakes, Simmons with her omelet and Grant requesting simply for a plate of toast. Fitz could tell that Simmons wanted to argue, wanted to tell him he could get something else, could order a mountain of bacon if he wanted, but he bumped his leg against hers and it was enough for her to get the message. “So, Grant Ward,” she says instead, leaning forward, resting her arms on the table once the waitress walks away, “How did you end up hitchhiking down the side of a highway?”

Fitz can see Grant's jaw clench and, without a menu to occupy him anymore, he starts to twist and pick at his paper napkin, leaving a slowly growing pile of jagged confetti next to his white porcelain mug.

“It's a long story,” he says eventually, shutting down anything more that they hoped to get out of the conversation.

For the rest of the meal, Fitz and Simmons continue their discourse from earlier, while Grant listens and nibbles on his heavily buttered wheat toast.

\- -

They find it easier than they expected to keep up a running stream of repartee between them with Grant in near deathly silence in the back and, by the afternoon, it's practically slipped their minds that he was even there at all. Fitz is beginning to get hungry, despite the fact that they had only eaten about five and a half hours ago and he had gone longer than that while working without any kind of sustenance. They had made it out of New York and were now somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania and Fitz decides to follow a sign to a town by the name of Johnstown that promised at least somewhere to park for an hour or two and stretch your legs.

An area just outside of a park, hot plastic playground teeming with children of varying ages (Fitz wonders idly why none of them are in school, only to remember that it was a Saturday), is waiting for them, splintery picnic tables lined up along patches of sand and old shredded tires, and they park directly in front of one, barely keeping the car in between the sloppily painted lines, and, for once, the three of them all exit at the same time. Fitz arches his back, stretches, and Simmons mimics him before marching over to the trunk and popping it open to dig out the cooler hidden under their layers of other bags.

Nearby parents give them a few cursory glances, always on alert, but something about them must have seemed innocent enough to not be seen as a threat. Grant lowers himself down on one side of the attached bench, swinging his legs awkwardly under the table, knees hitting the underside, and Fitz chooses to place himself on the edge of the table itself, legs just barely touching the ground.

“Here we go,” Simmons says, arms full, and Fitz reaches out, takes a tightly wrapped sandwich from the top of the pile for himself, reluctantly taking another to hand back to Grant, who tentatively accepts it. Simmons chooses a spot on the bench across from Grant, dumping three sweating water bottles onto the table. The only sound besides the children and the cars going slowly by are of plastic wrap being peeled away and the crack of the caps being broken off the tops of their bottles.

“This is pretty good,” Grant says a few minutes later, wiping aioli from the side of his mouth, already having finished half and Fitz nods absently, taking his time, picking a piece of prosciutto from between his front teeth. Simmons grins.

“Thank you. It's Fitz' favorite.”

“Well, you've got good taste then.”

“That I do,” Fitz brushes crumbs off of his pants and can feel Simmons roll her eyes.

When they finish, Simmons pulls out her phone, chewing on her thumbnail as she searches for something and Fitz is about to remark that perhaps they should keep going when she makes an outcry of excitement and Fitz jumps to his feet, going to hover behind her to catch a glimpse of what she could be looking at and she helps by holding the device nearer.

 _Come visit Mars!_ reads the small screen.

“A town called Mars, Fitz. And they have a flying saucer. We have to—”

“—Stop there. I don't disagree in the slightest.” Fitz leans closer, using his finger to enlarge the crude photo of a silver UFO statue. It looked utterly ridiculous, but he supposed that was the point. Before they had left, they had agreed that they would make sure to stop at at least one absurd roadside attraction in each state that they passed through as a way of documenting their journey and, while they had discovered a few places that could have made for a glorious distraction, most involved making appointments with the official owners or paying money to get in, neither of which they were prepared to do on short notice. They hadn't discussed if those plans were going to change now that they were one person extra, but it seemed as if Simmons had no intention of altering anything and Fitz figured that if Grant was really bothered by it, he didn't have to stay.

“Look at that,” Simmons says, turning the screen towards Grant, allowing him a moment to gaze at it.

“That's... something else, alright,” he affirms.

\- -

It takes them an hour from Johnstown to get to Pittsburgh, and from there it's another thirty minutes until they find Mars. After digging around between the seats, Fitz finds a quarter to feed a meter and they wander, passing by stores with the name of the town tacked in front of their generic titles. There's a place called Pizza Planet, where a group of high schoolers were hanging in front of, greasy slices in their thick hands and, all around them, other citizens meandered down the fractured sidewalks.

It isn't long before they stumble upon the giant saucer jammed proudly onto a spot of grass at the corner of the library. There's no plaque, no explanation for why it's there or who made it and Simmons pulls out her phone, switching on the camera.

“Alright then, Fitz, Grant,” she says and Fitz goes to join her in front of the statue but Grant stays where he is, holds out his hand and Simmons furrows her brow. “What are you doing?”

“Taking the photo,” Grant says uncertainly, looking even more bewildered when Simmons laughs.

“Don't be silly! You'll be in it, too. Don't worry,” she encourages when he doesn't go towards them, “This won't go on the internet, if that's what you're concerned about. It's just for us.”

“Excuse me,” Fitz calls out to a young mother pushing a stroller with a baby, tiny arms and legs waving as if dancing to music only it could hear and the woman draws near them cautiously until she sees the phone that Simmons is offering her. “We're sorry to bother you but would you mind...?”

“Oh, sure,” the woman says brightly, positioning the stroller close to her and knocking her heel into a lock to keep it from rolling away. She accepts the phone, turning it in different directions to decide which would give her the best result and, while she does it, Grant hesitantly walks over to stand between Fitz and Simmons, who break out into smiles and lift their hands concurrently to give a thumbs-up. Grant keeps his arms at his sides, barely looks relaxed and, when the woman realizes that's the best she's going to get, she taps and then scrutinizes the screen, lowering the phone when she decides she's satisfied with the outcome. They all pull out of their arrangements and Simmons takes back her phone, thanking the woman and complimenting her baby before they resume their walk.

“There,” Simmons says, bringing up the image. It looks comical, as if Fitz and Simmons had kidnapped Grant and forced him to pretend he was having a good time but Fitz feels like there's a certain charm about it and Simmons makes a note of admiration. “Now, shall we carry on?”

“Please,” Grant says, already starting to walk back in the direction of where they had parked.

\- -

They decide—or, rather, Fitz and Simmons agree after a brief conference while they paused at a red light before the turn back onto the highway—that they would drive throughout the night until they passed the border into Ohio and, from there, would find a place to possibly crash for at least a few hours.

Simmons falls asleep sometime around midnight, head resting on the seatbelt like a pillow, arms loose in her lap. Seeing her like that, plus the cold air whistling in through his window, is making Fitz' head go a bit fuzzy just around the edges and he's slightly alarmed when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“I could drive for a bit,” Grant is saying quietly and Fitz shakes his head, holds onto the wheel a bit tighter.

“Absolutely not. I'm fine.”

“Just for an hour or two.”

Fitz insists that he's got it and Grant put his hands up, flat in the air, surrendering.

\- -

Fitz makes it until four in the morning. His fingers are tingling, his eyes dry, and just as he's considering pulling into a weigh station or, even worse, allowing Grant to take his place behind the wheel, he finds a motel tucked away just past an exit for Lisbon. Simmons has been awake for only half an hour and Grant hasn't closed his eyes once the entire time they've been in the car. He leaves the two of them sitting alone while he goes to ask for a room, just until later that afternoon. The woman who's there is flipping through a magazine without really reading it, an old tv tuned to a channel airing nothing but infomercials on mute behind her.

When he returns, a single key gripped in his fist, Simmons is standing outside, leaning against the car with her arms wrapped around her chest.

“Going to stay in the car again, I assume,” Fitz says, gesturing towards Grant.

“Yeah. I said he could sleep on the floor but—”

“—It's the right thing for him to do.”

“It's ridiculous is what it is. But it's his prerogative, I suppose.” Simmons bends over, waves through the back window and then follows Fitz to their room. It's not much different than the one from Friday, except this time there are more stains and the sheets and blanket are decorated with fruit instead of flowers. There's a painting hanging in a cheap frame over the bed, a landscape of red and orange trees over a yellow-green field that was probably done by an artist who lives exclusively in sweatsuits and also does grotesquely proportioned portraits of their pets. Fitz collapses on the bed with a groan and it whines and creaks with the impact and he barely has time to turn his head so he doesn't accidentally smother himself before he falls asleep.


	3. Hold On, Let's Change The Station

Since the minute that Simmons had offered Grant a ride, she was aware of how untrusting Fitz was of the entire situation and she didn't blame him, not entirely. If they had just merely bumped into one another, she never would have taken the risk of inviting him into their car, but she figured that preventing both she and Fitz from getting a knife in the gut wasn't something that could just be easily thanked with a few bucks or a sandwich.

All she knew about hitchhikers was from horror stories, both from television and from Fitz himself after an evening where he accidentally found himself browsing a conspiracy website and couldn't be bothered to double-check the claims of violence and kidnappings on the kinds of sites that are supposed to verify those chain-letter-type stories. So far, though, Grant didn't seem as if he wanted to snap their necks or drag them off into the woods (when Simmons was much younger and went on trips with her family, they would occasionally pass by vehicles, stranded on the side of the road with no sign of the driver or any passengers and her father would tease her with anecdotes of human monsters who stalked through the trees and flagged down people only to grab them and haul them to their deaths. Despite her above average intelligence for her age, it proved difficult to disbelieve him and she still held a lingering fear of it to this day) and, for that, she was a little bit grateful, if only because one of the last things she didn't want to hear in this life is Fitz telling her that he told her so.

Simmons wasn't sure what had come over her when she had requested that he join them in their photo in front of the flying saucer yet, despite his obvious discomfort, she didn't regret it in the least. She was staring at this picture when she realizes that she isn't going to get much in the way of sleep due to the almost four hours of rest she had gotten just a little while earlier and she sighs, recalling that she had left Fitz' computer in the car.

Outside, the sky was slowly brightening and the light that was affixed to a spot above their door, the painted gold numbers sideways on rusted screws, flickered with the kind of deep orange that signaled the lightbulb was on it's last legs and desperately needed to be replaced. She attempts to open the trunk as soundlessly as possible but, with a vehicle of this age, it was nearly useless and, when she sees Grant stir, turning his head and then opening the door, she assumes it had been her fault.

“I'm sorry,” she says, speaking softly but not entirely sure why.

“I was already awake,” Grant reveals, reaching a hand behind him to rub at a spot on his shoulder.

“Ah. Did you sleep while Fitz was driving as well? The car makes a racket if it goes over sixty but, somehow, Fitz manages to keep it positively tranquil unless he goes over a pothole.”

“No, it's just... It's difficult.” He averts his gaze to his feet for the briefest of moments and then stands up straighter, holds his head up like Simmons was his commanding officer who just ordered him to stand at attention. He has a look on his face, a similar look like Fitz gets when he's trying to work through a problem internally, clunky gears in his head moving at lightening speed.

“He'll kill me if I told you this, but Fitz gets nightmares sometimes. Once or twice I've had to storm into his room to shake him awake. It's usually because he insists on snacking right before he goes to bed. I tell him not to but he never listens. At least, not when it comes to food.” Simmons smiles, remembers why she had come out there in the first place and pulls the bag out, slinging it over her arm and slamming the trunk closed. “Is that what it is then,” Simmons says when Grant doesn't respond, “Nightmares?” Grant still says nothing and Simmons nods as a way of telling him that she understands. “Well, you're still welcome to choose a spot on the floor. It's not quite as filthy as it seems. You can just knock if you'd like to come in.”

She doesn't stick around to wait for an answer.

An hour later, she's still sitting up at the small, unsteady wicker table, mindlessly browsing the internet with a hopelessly lagging connection, when she's distracted by a careful knocking on the door and, when she shuffles over to open it, Grant is standing there, as stiff as he was when they spoke previously.

“I just need a shower,” he says, his tone sharp, and she stands aside wordlessly to let him in.


	4. Elektro, The Robot of Mansfield, Says: "Scramble on Over to The World's Largest Egg and Then Hop Along to The Rabbit Ranch!" (Those are Terrible Puns.)

After wiping an embarrassing amount of drool from the right side of his mouth, the first thing that Fitz notices is the red numbers on the digital clock next to the bed that were quietly informing him that it was almost noon. The next thing that he was aware of was Simmons talking and, while it wasn't unheard of for her to carry on interesting conversations with herself, he got the feeling that this wasn't one of those rare occasions and, when he finally rolls over and sits up, he's surprised to see Grant in the room with them, seated on the carpet next to the door, his legs pulled up to his chest, arms balanced on his bended knees.

He looks like any minute he was ready to bolt and, when Simmons notices that Fitz is awake, she stops speaking mid-sentence and beams at him, pointing towards a styrofoam takeout box on the table that Fitz hadn't seen yet.

“The woman who owns the place has three-day-old muffins. It's not much but it's better than nothing. She insisted we take one of these boxes and then proceeded to tell us the story behind why she had them in the first place and, I swear Fitz, I only remember something about a possum and a bottle of whiskey being involved somehow.” She chuckles and Fitz has so many questions, most of them pertaining to what Grant was doing in there and how long he had been there for and, maybe, what a possum had to do with styrofoam containers but his stomach seemed to have developed vocal chords at some point in the early morning and it's emphatic grumbling was pushing it's way higher on the list of priorities.

The muffin was dry and crumbly, the blueberries wrinkled and devoid of any juice they may have had at one point, but it was large and did enough for the time being and, when he's done, Fitz cracks the container into pieces, each snap of the taut packaging filling the tiny room. He cleans himself up in the bathroom and Simmons accosts him when he comes back out, puts her phone into his hand and he stares at her, reads her expression, the way her eyebrows and the slight down-turn at the corners of her mouth tell him to play nice. His cheeks redden and he looks at the screen as a way to avoid any further eye contact.

“Elektro,” he recites, “Former star of the 1939 New York World's Fair. In Mansfield, Ohio?” Fitz questions and Simmons smirks.

\- -

The Mansfield Memorial Museum looks more like a church from the outside than any kind of museum any of them had been in before. An American flag waves proudly on a thin pole, a street lamp placed oddly close to the stairs, and the three of them maneuver around it, Fitz and Simmons in the lead, Grant trailing behind. Once again, he had suggested he wait, that he not be involved but, just as before, Simmons maintained that if was traveling with them, he had to be a part of everything and Fitz didn't object because it was easier not to.

A grey-haired woman is standing behind a low desk and she perks up at the new people who had entered her line of sight, shifts on her orthopedic shoes, adjusts her flowing blouse.

“We're here for the robot,” Fitz says, the words coming out more threatening than he meant them but the woman just laughs, indicates to a beige tin box in front of her.

“Admission is a donation, to help keep this fine museum running so folks like you can come by when you please. We won't say no to any amount.”

“Will five dollars a piece do?” Simmons suggests, already pulling out her wallet, not waiting for an affirmation. Fitz digs around in his own leather wallet for an offering, gives over five singles and Simmons begins to pull out two five dollar bills when a hand is put over hers without touching it, and she turns to see Grant stopping her, taking a wrinkled green paper out of his back pocket. She shakes her head but he shakes it back at her and she hesitates, finally puts one of the bills away. “You didn't have to do that,” Simmons says, once they've been directed down a hallway and towards heavy double doors, out of hearing range of the older woman.

“Let's just get this over with,” Grant replies.

\- -

Other than a young man about the same age as Fitz and Simmons standing guard inside the entrance who looked neither pleased nor disturbed by their presence, there's nobody else there but them, the only sound their footsteps hitting an unpolished wooden floor. 

Inside was much more than just the promised robot, glass cases packed with displays of taxidermied animals of varying species wearing ridiculous costumes (a group of ducks posed as if in the middle of a wedding, dressed fully in the appropriate attire, more duck heads and a chicken head attached to posable doll bodies, sitting around a small handmade table with tiny silverware laid out in front of them), a planter made from the foot of an elephant, the dusty boots of an Apollo 13 astronaut, a bicycle that claimed to be the oldest in the entire state, two tree trunks supposedly from an orchard planted by Johnny Appleseed. Each had a plaque, done by hand in block letters, explaining the origins, the histories, the provenances and Fitz and Simmons stopped to read every one, to take the occasional snapshot, ignoring the restlessness emanating from Grant as they paused each time.

And there, at the far end of the room, was Elektro, standing proud in front of a long display of replica advertisements and newspaper articles, an old television propped up on a table showing scratched footage of the once-functional robot performing the tricks he had done over seventy-five years ago. Fitz and Simmons watched the video, shoulders touching as they stood together, until it started over. They stayed for the beginning part they missed and, finally, Simmons drew out her phone.

The man by the door had been following them not so discreetly the entire time and, when he saw Simmons take out her phone, he accepted it from her speechlessly, moving a few steps back, careful not to run into a display directly behind him, keeping his arms up and level, biding his time until they got into position. Fitz and Simmons sit down on the floor at Elektro's thick and clunky feet, crossing their legs, hands in their laps, Grant taking a tense stance aside Elektro's right arm and the man has to move further backwards just to get them all in frame but, ultimately, he manages it, closing one eye as he pushes the button on the screen, lowering his arms and giving them a thumbs-up.

It's ungraceful and cheesy but it suits them somehow.

\- -

Four hours later, they're already in Indiana and Simmons is telling them about the World's Largest Egg in Mentone, if they wanted to stop there, maybe. Despite their previously agreed upon plan, Fitz is content to keep going until they fly right through to Illinois and he can tell that Grant feels the same way, but her enthusiasm isn't easy to squash and, besides, they could all do with a hot meal.

They find the concrete egg on the corner of Main Street, the name of the town painted along the top, underneath a yellow and black outlined image of the state, a basket of eggs inside the borders. _The Egg Basket of The Midwest_ , it says at the bottom in straight, neat letters. It's cold to the touch and it takes a few minutes for Simmons to find someone willing to take their picture but, finally, a chubby man with a small dog quaking on a thin leash stops and does them the favor. They stand to the right of it, Simmons wrapping an arm around Fitz' shoulders, pressing their heads together as they smile, Grant lingering behind them.

While Fitz crouches down to play with the man's dog, Simmons asks about a cheap place to eat and they're aimed towards a small diner that would only been open for another hour but the cook and owner would be happy to help them out, especially since they seemed to be such nice people.

\- -

It's warm and still rather full, the bizarrely carpeted floor the color of dark red wine making no noise as they were led to a booth next to a window facing the side of a hardware store next door and, as they had been in the first diner back in Pennsylvania, Fitz and Simmons sat across from Grant, the split and peeling leather with leaking stuffing sinking under their weight. The hostess miscounts, only lays out two menus onto the sticky table and Fitz and Simmons share one, propping it up in front of them like a wall as they browse through the selections, murmuring to one another in stilted shorthand as they perused prices and options, laughing when they saw that the diner still offered “freedom fries”.

They hear Grant chuckle and, startled by the sound, they each grab hold of a side of their menu and lower it enough that they can stare at him. When he notices that they had heard him, he forces the noise to stop, pushes his mouth into as much of a straight line as he can get it, but points to a spot near the bottom of the first page.

“Freedom fries,” he says.

“I can't believe it. I heard that places actually did it but I assumed they were just rumors,” Simmons says, shaking her head.

“It's incredible,” Fitz says. “Some Republican or another thinks changing the name of French fries in protest to something having to do with the French and the rest of the bloody country thinks it's a brilliant idea just because some guy in their political party does it first.” His rant is interrupted by the appearance of their harried waitress, who asks solemnly if they were ready to order. “We'll start with a plate of french fries,” Fitz tells her, folding his hands together, and she furrows her brow.

“I'm sorry, you'll—”

“Oh. Right. Freedom fries,” Fitz clarifies, watching her frown deepen. “And an iced tea.” After the other two give her their drink orders, she dithers, pen poised over her pad of off-white paper.

“Did... Did you really want to start with—”

“Freedom fries? Yes. Absolutely.” Simmons waits for her to leave before smacking Fitz on the arm.

“You're being a little shit, Leopold Fitz.”

“Like you don't think it's any less preposterous,” Fitz retorts.

“Well, of course I do, but I'm not going to torture the waitress because of it!”

“Torture—”

“—The waitress, yes, Fitz. It's terrible. The whole thing is outrageous but—”

“—She won't even remember us when we leave! Besides, it'll be an experiment. Hypothesis: do Freedom fries taste different than French fries?” They interact like Grant isn't there, not even noticing as their drinks arrive and Grant allows them to carry on, squeezing lemon into his water, shielding it with his hand so as not to accidentally spray them with the acidic juice.

“This experiment is no good,” Simmons complains three minutes later when the steaming plate of fries is placed in the middle of the table. “We've got no background research, no control group, no second plate of French fries! Even the most basic scientific method is being ignored here, Fitz.”

“You're right. We'd have to at least separate them onto three plates, one with salt, one with ketchup and—”

“—One with nothing,” they say at the same time and start to peer around, hoping to flag down their waitress to request extra empty plates and perhaps a few more napkins. Grant reaches down to take one and they discontinue their brief quest to watch him instead.

“What does it taste like?” Fitz asks and Grant, to his credit, chews thoughtfully, lets his gaze drift towards the discolored tile ceiling.

“Freedom,” he says after he swallows the last piece. “It tastes like freedom.” Simmons laughs, picks up one for herself and takes a bite.

“Freedom could use some salt,” she says and Fitz is next, choosing a large one with burnt edges, taking a piece between his front teeth, not able to hide his own small look of amusement.

“And ketchup,” he concludes, reaching across the table to grab the half-full glass bottle, twisting the white metal cap, dumping globs of it onto the golden pile of fries, Simmons following up with a generous amount of near invisible white grains from a shaker of salt.

\- -

The rest of dinner is unremarkable and, when they leave, they decide to just keep driving until the sun comes up and then figure out where they wanted to go from there but, when they actually get to the car, Grant doesn't climb in, just stands on the sidewalk and Fitz and Simmons get back out.

“What's the matter?” Simmons asks, resting an arm on the roof of the car.

“I think it's best for us to part ways,” Grant says and it sounds so formal, rigid and rehearsed. The expressions of their faces are perfect copies and Fitz is surprised at how his opinion had already changed enough that he was feeling the same as Simmons about hearing that sentence.

“Did we do something?” Simmons inquires. Fitz can see her brain working, can see how she runs through everything they've said since they met, everything they did and where things could have possibly gone wrong and Fitz finds himself doing the same, rewinding the past three or so days, bodies and words moving in reverse, scrutinizing the bits and pieces that could have been the final straw that cracked the poor camel's back but he comes up empty and so does Simmons and, for their trouble, Grant merely shakes his head, turns like he's going to walk away without saying anything else. “Wait!” Simmons calls out, louder than she probably needed to, and a group of women wandering by glance in their direction but realize that whatever's going on isn't as interesting as they might have hoped and go back to minding their own business. “You don't want to stay here, do you?”

“It's the middle of nowhere,” Fitz agrees, gesturing his arm outwards at the brick buildings, the flat surfaces just beyond them, the scattering of trees and dried grass, turning the color of swamp water in the darkening light. A stop light swings in the breeze just a few feet away, a pick-up truck coughing black smoke waiting for the speckled green to give him permission to go, a family dressed in matching jean shorts and t-shirts, rambling towards the diner they had only just left behind.

“If you really want to leave,” Simmons says, “At least let us take you closer to Springfield, Illinois. They're bound not to have Freedom Fries there.” And, for a moment, it looks like Grant is considering it, but he just shakes his head again, won't look at them and starts to move, not going anywhere in particular, as long as it's somewhere away from them. Any disappointment he had been feeling is fading and there's a part of Fitz that wants to shrug, wants to say that that was it, it would be an interesting story for Skye when they get back home, but Simmons is slamming her door shut and Fitz thinks she's gotten in but, instead, he sees her marching off after Grant and he makes an indignant noise, closes his own door and follows her. “Grant!” She says his name and he actually stops, turns around and waits. “I'm not... I just thought—” She's reaching into her bag, pulling out her wallet, slipping out a ten dollar bill that she holds out to him and, when he doesn't take it, she grasps his wrist (Fitz noting the way he subtly cringes), and pushes it into his open palm, curling his fingers around the paper. “There. Fitz?” She addresses him next and Fitz feels as if he should keep his hands in his pockets but he finds they have miraculously developed a mind of their own because he's fishing around, finding a few bills he had gotten as change after dinner and he gives them to Simmons, who in turn adds it to the money already in Grant's hand. “Thirteen dollars,” she says. “Not much, I'm afraid, but at least you won't have to hitchhike for awhile. Look, see,” she points at somewhere over Grant's shoulder. “A bus stop. Good luck.”

She wraps her hands around one of Fitz' arms and the pair walk away.

They're nearly back to their silver car when they hear someone shout, at first, almost too quietly for them to think it was directed towards them, but then it's louder and they turn to see Grant approaching them steadily and they remain where they are until he's close enough that he doesn't have to holler anymore to get their attention.

“Take your money back,” he says, holding the ten dollar bill up to Simmons, the singles up to Fitz and, after some hesitation, they do as requested, stuffing them back into bags and pockets. Even in the shadowy spot they lingered in, a space between street lamps, they can see he looks forlorn and ill-at-ease and he swallows, stares at them without speaking for what feels like thirty minutes but was probably only thirty seconds. “Let's get out of this place,” he says, finally. Simmons smiles and Fitz feels the corners of his mouth tug upwards, just a bit, as well.

\- -

Grant volunteers to drive again, just to give Fitz a chance to relax, but Fitz says no.

There may not be the same amount of distrust he harbored just a couple days before, but the thought of Grant being behind the wheel, with both him and especially Simmons vulnerable, still sent a worm-like crawling up and down his vertebrae.

Some time around five in the morning he finds an abandoned rest stop that's nothing more than a wide slab of pavement surrounded by unkept weeds and he pulls in, parking next to a small, paint-peeling shed with a heavy lock on the slightly bent door. The cars rushing by sound like the ocean, and he shuts off the engine, tells Grant that he just needs to close his eyes for an hour or two, that he's welcome to it as well but if he tries anything, he should be aware that he had taken karate lessons for a few years as a child, so he knows how to defend himself.

(The truth was, he had taken the classes for all of a month, one of his father's hopeless attempts at trying to figure out his son and get him interested in some sort of physical activity that didn't involve dismantling their home electronics, but Grant didn't need to know that.)

\- -

When Fitz wakes up, the car is moving. For a moment, he panics, assuming that he had managed to kick the parking break while he slept and they were currently rolling into the middle of the highway, only to be crushed by an oncoming truck just as he feared before they even left their apartment and he sits up, fingers scrambling at his seatbelt, only to find that he had somehow teleported into the backseat and that Grant was in front of him, operating the vehicle, while Simmons sits in the same seat, Fitz' laptop balanced on her legs as she messes around with programs that didn't require any internet.

“What the hell is this,” Fitz demands and Grant glances at him in the rearview mirror, the same way Fitz had done so many times before, except Grant looks less suspicious and more unsure, but Simmons lifts her head, turns it the best she can, holding onto the computer so as not to send it flying to the floor or colliding with the dashboard.

“You were so tired, Fitz,” Simmons explains. “By the time I woke up it was nearly eight o'clock and you were still completely passed out. We couldn't stay there any longer.” Fitz' mouth is agape and he searches his head, ultimately recalling, vaguely, Simmons helping him sleepily out of his seat and into the spot he is right now, buckling him in, but anything after that is blank.

“You could have driven!”

“You know how I feel about that.” Fitz did know. Simmons has had her license for as long as he has, but she had never been truly comfortable driving, spending hours before and after the test with a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, obeying each rule and law more carefully than she needed to, every trip with her accompanied by an orchestra of car horns and exasperated drivers.

“This is... unacceptable,” Fitz says, sitting forward, waving a finger between them and Grant says that maybe he should pull over, that they could just as easily switch places again but Simmons denies him, says that it's fine.

“We're nearly to Staunton,” Simmons says, pointing to a sign they quickly pass under.

Fitz grumbles, “What's in Staunton?”

“Late breakfast,” she says. “But, more importantly, there's a rabbit ranch.”

\- -

It's just off of Route 66 and they're greeted by a hand painted, brightly colored arrow pointing down a lengthy gravel driveway towards what appeared to be an old gas station, a faded Standard Oil sign rusty in front of a low building, broken gas pumps and a row of what they discovered to be Volkswagen Rabbits, shoved vertically into the ground. _Historic Route 66 Tourist Information Center_ says one sign, _Get Your Kicks on Route 66, Chicago, IL – 250 miles_ , reads the one directly underneath it and the three of them walk cautiously, taking in their surroundings.

“Are you sure this is it?” Fitz asks nervously but then they hear the sound of children shrieking with laughter, of an eruption of adult cackling and shouting so they figure that, yes, maybe this is the right place. They follow the noise around the side of the building to come upon a gaggle of other people, most of them families, wandering around an expansive patch of land, grass shining and spread wide, a wire fence looping around an area that was filled with rabbits, exactly as promised. There are pollen and seeds floating in the air and a small girl with dark curls shrieks again with delight as she reaches down to touch tiny fingers into the fur of a brown rabbit with floppy ears.

Grant is clenching his jaw each time she screeches and Fitz catches it, Simmons seeing is as well.

“Are you—” Simmons starts but Grant interrupts, doesn't let her finish.

“I'm fine.” And they don't believe him—it's clear from his tone that he doesn't believe it either—but they drop it, Simmons instead guiding their attention towards a large, fiberglass statue of a jackrabbit with a saddle on his thin back further down the field. There's a staircase attached to it's side, splintery and unstable, but Simmons doesn't hesitate, handing over her phone to Fitz, climbing quickly, and scrambling onto the seat, the spot worn from so many others before her.

“How do I look?” She asks, calling out to them.

“Marvelous,” Fitz replies, shielding his eyes and messing with the framing, the lighting, attempting to come to an agreement with the sun, just for a few seconds, so he could get the perfect photograph. They trade places soon after he finishes, taking her spot on the animal's back, leaning forward to rest his arm causally on it's neck, as if this rabbit were his faithful steed and the two of them had been traveling for years throughout the plains of Illinois.

“Go on,” Simmons bolsters Grant after Fitz had dismounted, his feet back on solid ground, and Grant surveys the creature but remains unmoved. Fitz nudges him, elbow against his arm, pushing him forward and Simmons nods, eyebrows raised and Grant sighs. He falters at the bottom of the stairs, looks back at them but they merely indicate to where they want him to go and, head down with embarrassment, he ascends, lowering himself down onto the saddle, a hand over his face. “Come on then, Grant Ward,” Simmons says, holding up her phone, “Give us a smile!”

It looks forced and pained, but it's there and Simmons and Fitz press their heads together as she takes the picture. She's still holding the phone up as they deliberative over it, forgetting that Grant was still sitting there until they hear him ask if he can come back down.

\- -

“Did you know,” Simmons says to Grant as she stands inside the fence, holding a large black rabbit in her arms, his nose whiffling, “That if you pet a rabbit seventy million times, you will have developed enough static electricity to light a sixty-watt lightbulb for one whole minute?”

“I did not,” Grant tells her as he watches Fitz explain something seemingly complex to a very confused looking young boy.

“They also have three eyelids,” Fitz says, cutting himself off in the middle of a sentence and the boy's face screws up.

“They do?” He says, bending over to examine one of the rabbit's faces more closely.

“They certainly do,” Simmons confirms.

“And they can't vomit,” Fitz tells him.

“Why not?” The boy asks.

“Because,” Fitz explains, “they are practically incapable of reverse peristalsis.” He offers nothing further, as if that was a sufficient enough answer and the boy pouts, eyes squinting as he attempts to work through it, search his memories for a time when he might have heard those words or even ones vaguely similar. He asks, finally, what that means and Fitz sighs. “It means that the smooth muscle of their esophagus only goes in one direction.”

“I still don't get it,” the boy says. Grant snorts. “What does 'esfofagug' mean?”

“Go ask your mother,” Fitz says to him, fed up, and the boy dutifully waddles off towards a statuesque woman with thick blonde hair, tugging on her pant leg. She crouches down to his height, listens patiently to his tedious spiel and when he finishes, knitting her brows, asking her son a question and he repeats something, chewing on his finger. She then turns to the trio at the other end of the enclosed space, glaring and rising to her full height.

“Maybe you should have taught him how to properly pronounce 'esophagus' first, Fitz,” Simmons says, putting the rabbit she still held gently back onto the ground, not letting her eyes drift from the mother as if she were a predator that would attack the second she looked away. The woman began to verge upon them with long strides, her son following close behind, and Grant, almost instinctively, places himself between her and Fitz and Simmons, facing quickly towards them and pushing them gently towards the exit. “We had a lovely time, thank you,” Simmons calls out as they run past the owner, who eyes them strangely as he watches them disappear down the dusty path.

\- -

“How could he possibly,” Fitz says as they roar down the highway, still feeling as if the mother had somehow found them and would be trailing in her SUV, “Have mangled the pronunciation of such an elementary word so poorly that his mother tried to kill us!”

“He was just a kid,” Grant says from the backseat and Fitz rolls his eyes.

“That's no excuse! I knew how to say it when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, well,” Grant shrugs, “I'm starting to gather that you weren't necessarily a normal kid.”

“I assure you, both Jemma and I were quite normal. We just happened to have IQs that, thankfully, are way above average.”

“You see, that doesn't sound completely normal to me.”

“And you're just Mister Average Joe, then, are you,” Fitz snaps at him. He (and, he assumed, Simmons, as they didn't meet until university) had endured many years of names, some clever, most not, being lobbed at him for the sheer reason of being gifted with the kind of smarts that ensured a clear-cut bright future as long as he could make it through the insecurity of his peers, both younger and older than him. It was a sensitive topic, though less so than it had once been, and he knew, of course, that they were indeed extraordinary, but hearing someone they had only just met refer to them as anything but “normal” caused an electric shock of defensiveness to pulse through his nerves. “Probably played football, did you? Quarterback. Always quarterback,” Fitz mumbles, shifting in his seat.

“I, uh... I didn't play football,” Grant admits tentatively.

“Why not?”

“Not my thing.”

Fitz sniffs. “Well, you definitely weren't bullied. Look at you. Nobody would want to beat you up.”

It's as if Fitz had flicked a rubber band directly in Grant's face and he goes rigid, his face shutting down and he sits back, spine straight as he blinks out the window. Neither Fitz nor Simmons says anything about it, but they share a look that spoke volumes.


	5. Nothing to See Here, Folks, Just Passing Through

“There's absolutely nothing here,” Simmons says three hours later as they pass the border into Fairfield, Iowa.

“You can say that again,” Fitz remarks slowing down to stare out the windows at the fading light as it casts almost no shadows over the unbroken land that's stretched out on either side of them. Even as they approach the city, buildings looming like black, monstrous shapes in the distance, it felt empty and much too large.

“No,” Simmons says, holding out her phone but careful not to put it directly into Fitz' face. “I mean there aren't many attractions. The most interesting one is far too much of a detour, I'm afraid. We'll just have to go on through right to Nebraska.” It was a shame, really. Simmons had wanted at least one photograph from each state they wound their way through and the lack of anything worthwhile that was on their direct path put an odd lump of stone in her stomach (or, perhaps, she was just hungry).

They find a motel, the 'vacancy' sign popping and flickering and pull up to the first spot they see, right next to the pool, the water lit by underwater lights that gave it an eerie glow, as if it would take you into another world, and Simmons hung over the low fence, staring at it while Fitz went to deal with the woman at the counter. When he returns he gives Simmons the key, informs her that he inquired about the pool and that yes, they could use it any time because he knows she'd want to make sure she wasn't breaking any rules and then tells both her and Grant that there was a place that served supposedly the best burgers for miles, and that he would go get them some. She asks if he wanted company, surprised when he denies her, saying that he doesn't mind and she nods, watching him drive off.

She feels Grant come up beside her and she glances over to him as he looks out towards the quiet road before walking towards the gate and nudging it open just enough that she could slip past. Bathing suits hadn't been considered when packing and, instead, she toes off her shoes, rolls up the legs of her jeans as far as she could get them to go and sits on the stony edge of the pool, warm chlorine filling her nose as she lowers her feet into the cool water.

It takes a few minutes but Grant finally joins her, sliding a long plastic chair closer to where she sat, the feet scraping the concrete, lowering himself on the end, feet solid on the ground.

“Did you know that nearly three-hundred million cells die in the human body every minute? And every day the body produces three-hundred billion new cells. My mother used to tell me that. It was one of the first scientific facts that I told her when I was four years old. When I'd have a bad day, no matter what it was, she'd tell me that and then say: 'You're not the same person you were a day or, even, a whole minute ago'. Every minute, every day, a little bit of you is brand new. Whatever bad things may have happened are already gone.” Simmons smiles and kicks her feet, splashing the water. “I didn't think it helped, but I find myself still thinking about it so it must have left some sort of impression.” She doesn't have to look at Grant to know that he's wondering why she's telling him any of this. “I suppose I figured you might need to hear that, is all.”

“I was in the army,” Grant says after almost ten minutes of silence, and Simmons twists her neck to look at him, but he's focused on his shoes. “And now I'm not.”

“Is that why you were hitchhiking?”

“It's part of it,” he says.

“What's the other part?” Simmons asks, already knowing she won't get an answer and, even if she was, Fitz has returned, popping whatever thin-skinned bubble they had wobbling around them. There's a large paper bag in one hand, a tray of three paper cups, the straws sticking out like antenna. Before handing it all out, Fitz removes his own shoes, adjusts his pants and sits down next to Simmons, dipping his own feet into the rippling and waving liquid.

“Here we are,” he says, digging around in the bag, passing out burgers, napkins and paper holders of skinny french fries.

“We should be saluting him from now on,” Simmons says, flattening her hand horizontally against her forehead and pulling it stiffly away from her and Fitz does the same before realizing he doesn't know why he's doing it. “He's a soldier,” she discloses, taking a noisy sip from her cup.

“Oh, well then,” Fitz says through a mouthful of bun and meat, repeating the gesture more formally this time. Grant shakes his head, entertained more than disconcerted.

When they finish, Simmons stands, plucks her phone from her purse and sits next to Grant on the chair, beckoning Fitz to do the same and he tosses a crumpled napkin with the rest of them in the paper-turned-garbage-bag, crawling over on his knees, pebbles and leaves stuck to the bottom of his bare feet. Simmons moves in slightly closer, Fitz following suit, and she holds the phone as far as her arms would go to make sure they were all at least partially in frame. She pushes the button on the screen blindly and there's a bright flash followed by a click.

“See,” she says, swiveling it around so they could all regard it, “We got our Iowa photo after all.”

It was poorly lit and Fitz was missing an ear but, for the first time since she had started, Grant had a genuine smile.


	6. Forget About Fort Cody's Trading Post! Carhenge is Where You Want to Be. But Watch Out for The Jackalope, He Packs Quite a Punch.

Buffalo Bill, standing thirty feet tall in front of log stockade walls, is there to receive visitors when they make it to Fort Cody's Trading Post in Nebraska. It towers above them, wood and metal, dummies of soldiers solid but threadbare manning the battlements, their costumes torn and faded, guns ready to attack as flags whip and crack in a line on either side of their forms. It takes the three of them a few minutes to find a parking space and, as they walk through the lot, families move around them, coming and going, bags full of toys and replicas that would wind up gathering dust on their mantlepieces or at the bottom of a garbage bag on the curb after it gets boxed away as junk a few years later. It's busier than they expected and there's a small line to get in but it's manageable and, as they wait, the sun beats down on the tops of their heads and they listen to the fragments of conversations that surround them.

There's a mother with four, round-faced children looped around her, holding onto pieces of her clothing with fingers sticky with something bright red, the father hangdog and deflated, a white-haired man with another man who might have been his son and they laugh about something, throwing their heads back in perfect synchronicity, a gaggle of girls speaking Spanish so fast that it almost didn't seem real and one of the them, with her black hair in braids, sticks her tongue out at her friends. There's a woman on her own that reminds Fitz of Skye, young and excitable, a fancy camera in her hands as she takes pictures of everything, wasting battery on the backs of people's heads so as not to lose a single moment of her being there. A Texan accent shouts behind them, a couple complains about the heat that really wasn't bad at all, parents confirm over and over, making sure that this was indeed free, wondering if the two-headed calf that was promised to be on display inside would scare their child, even though her meek voice insisted that she wasn't scared of anything.

Grant isn't as loosened as he was at the poolside in Iowa, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and Simmons reaches out and slides her arm through his and he looks surprised, withdrawing slightly but not pulling away (not that he easily could with the limited space around them) and Fitz notices. He almost copies her on impulse, knows people he could do that with but isn't sure if Grant would find it too bizarre a gesture coming from him, so he settles instead on keeping a minimal amount of space between them and, this close, Fitz can feel the straining of Grant's muscles and the way he vibrates virtually imperceptibly.

“Are you alright?” Simmons keeps her voice low but Fitz can still hear what she says and he glances at Grant's face, understands more than he already did why she asks. He's seen that look before on a kid in his grade when he was eight; they had gone on a field trip to a zoo and he had wound up in the insect house, standing breathlessly and pale in front of a spider the size of his small fist. He had to be escorted out by a chaperone and sat down on a bench to allow him time to calm down and, when the rest of the class had ventured out of the exit, they found him still sitting with his hands over his face, the color only just returning to his cheeks.

At this moment, Grant seems to be on the edge of needing that same sympathetic chaperone but he bristles at Simmons' question, rolls and hunches his shoulders and juts out his chin as if attempting to make himself both much, much smaller and much, much bigger than those around them.

“Yes,” Grant responds, just that word, nothing else and they barely catch it but Simmons is peering behind Grant's back at Fitz and Fitz can read her expression like the only manual he's ever actually had to use. He's always been able to, even on the first day they met when they accidentally ran into one another, their papers mixing into a glorious pile on the floor and they fought over a scientific journal until they realized that they had been carrying the same copy and, from that one meeting, he had been able to tell that she was flustered, concerned about a project, still nervous because of how young she was and she could easily sense his joy at finally being able to meet the only other person at the school who was the same age as him and that he still didn't believe her when she claimed that the journal he was clutching was hers because the one she had had a small tear in the back, left corner even though, somehow his did as well.

“I think you may have dropped the keys, Fitz,” Simmons says, her voice loud, each word punctuated and stilted, her terrible acting and her unnecessary excuse distracting Fitz from remembering to play along. He's annoyed that he's being blamed for this even though it didn't actually happen, but he sighs dramatically anyway and shrugs.

“Sorry, Simmons. You know, if we had a monkey like I've always suggested, he could have held the keys and then we'd never lose them!” His tone is accidentally confrontational, repeating an argument that they've had numerous times beforehand and Simmons looks at him, puzzled and fed up, mouthing 'really, Fitz?' and he merely shrugs. Grant opens his mouth, most likely to ask them what in the world they were doing, but Simmons discreetly tugs on him, begins to lead them out of the line and through the mass of people, saying “excuse me” and “pardon us” as they go.

“Three pairs of eyes are better than one,” Simmons explains with false laughter as if somebody had questioned why all of them needed to leave to go search for a pair of keys. In no time, they're back outside and they stop near a heavy, red-painted cannon that sat under an animal fur tacked to the wooden wall and Simmons finally lets go and steps away, standing next to Fitz. “The monkey thing again, Fitz? Honestly.”

“They're extraordinarily useful, Simmons!”

“I'm not debating that! I never have!” She throws her hands up in the air. “Where would we get one?”

“That's what you always ask me, every time.”

“Because it's a good question and you've never answered it!”

“As I've told you, many times, I'm still doing my research! Once I have all of my sources sorted, I'll give you a—”

“—Proper presentation. Yes, Fitz, I've been hearing that one for months! And yet there's no presentation.”

“Thank you,” Grant says and they cease their bickering, turn away from each other because at some point they had gone face-to-face, moving close enough that there was barely an inch or two between them, and they blink at him as if they had no idea what he was talking about but then Simmons smiles, shoulders relaxing and Fitz files the rest of the dispute away for later, a 'to be continued' left unspoken.

“I'm entirely sure that man in front of us had bathed in a tub of hot fish this morning,” Simmons says, crinkling her nose. “I had to get away from that.”

“Right,” Fitz agrees. “And I'm positive that woman from the rabbit ranch was behind us in line. I think she's stalking us. Better to get out of there before she seeks us out. Make a clean getaway.”

“I know what you're doing and you don't have to pretend,” Grant says and Fitz and Simmons give each other faux-baffled looks. “You can go back if you want. I can wait—”

“Nonsense.” Simmons waves her hand at him. “Who really wants to see a two-headed calf, anyway?”

“Seen one, you've seen them all,” Fitz says. He had, in fact, seen one and didn't find it as impressive as his peers had at the time, disappointed that witnessing an already dead and stuffed creature with two heads could be such mundane experience. Simmons had been with him and, while she had asked numerous questions about it's biology, she found the whole encounter rather tedious as well. They say nothing more about it as they begin their trek back to the car, Simmons already researching another location that wouldn't require them to drive in the complete opposite direction, her hand over the screen as she types vigorously with her thumb.

“Look at that,” she says, showing Fitz what she found as they waited their turn to pull out of the lot. “Should have just gone there in the first place.”

\- -

Around them for miles is nothing but the late afternoon dishwater pink and orange sky and parched grass. They traverse down a timeworn and heavily used dirt path, hearing distant birds and buzzing of tiny insects that Fitz waves at frantically, cursing under his breath about nature and it takes about ten minutes to get to the end, to the stacked circle of old vehicles, propped together in a form resembling England's Stonehenge.

The thirty-eight cars are spray painted grey, slapdash, battered from years of being overworked by snow and wind and rain, rust flaking and burning red in patches, dents in the doors, windows scratched.

“This is ludicrous,” Fitz says as he stands at the wide entrance. “What's the point of it?”

“Apparently it was built as a memorial for the artist's father,” Simmons recalls from a block of text she had read earlier. “There used to be a farmhouse here.”

“It's bizarre.”

“I think it's quite nice.” Fitz wants to ask Grant, to see if he could convince him to be on his side, to concur that these cars assembled in a poor facsimile of a much more impressive structure—memorial or not—was just as laughable as _he_ thought it was, but he's gone from behind them, now sitting on the slanted vehicle that was jammed in the center of the ring, the hood buried under thirsty soil. He's not really looking at anything in particular and Fitz watches as Simmons zooms in with her camera enough that the picture wasn't degraded and takes his photograph without him knowing. “Now us,” she says and they turn around so the sculpture was in the background and they push their heads together, grinning.

They go to accompany him soon after, perching on either side. Metal digs into them at odd angles and they wiggle and shift, attempting to get as comfortable as they possible could and Fitz slips, tilts backwards and, just as he thinks he's about to crack his skull open, there's a hand on his back, propping him up and he's oddly taken aback to see that it was Grant who had helped him, although he never had a reason to believe that it wasn't something he would think to do.

“I thought you were going to leave,” Fitz says to him suddenly. “Somewhere in Illinois.” He doesn't know why he brings it up and Simmons glares at him but the comment doesn't seem to bother Grant.

“So did I.” He leans forward, folds his hands between his knees.

Simmons says, “We're glad you didn't.” Fitz wants to protest that, for once, she should speak for only herself, but he finds that he can't spit it out, that, maybe, there was a part of him somewhere that thought that Grant not walking away when he said he would wasn't such a terrible thing and it trips him up enough that anything else he was going to say is lost.

For awhile, they just sit there until it begins to darken to the point that, if they waited around much longer, they'd never be able to find their way and, together, they wander back the way they came.

\- -

It's only a two hour drive to the next point of interest in Douglas, Wyoming that Simmons wants a picture with and they find no reason not to drive there immediately but find a place to stay overnight and wait to explore until the morning. The motel is the nicest one so far, but still entirely mediocre and Grant insists on continuing to spend the night in the backseat of the car but, at least, he uses their bathroom without the same uneasy way he had a few days ago.

They eat a breakfast of overly chewy bagels bought from a small local grocery store, the older woman behind the counter interrogating them endlessly and cheerfully when she saw the new faces, the old bell tied to the door ringing obnoxiously as they enter. She starts with where they're from, where they're going and how they know each other and Simmons answers her politely but Fitz can see the frustrating crinkling in the corners of her eyes. The woman seems wary when they confess at how they had picked Grant up at a gas station in Pennsylvania and she questions their accents, needles them practically for their family history, explains that they do get visitors but not as many as they may think and it's another fifteen minutes before they can make wriggle free from her spotlight.

The eight-foot tall Jackalope concrete statute that they were there for is perched on a corner, a slim rabbit with dangerously pointed antlers affixed on it's head, it's haunches round and thick. The only person they can find that's willing to take their picture is the woman from the store who was currently outside sweeping the sidewalk as if she was using it as an excuse to keep an eye on the newcomers. She is more than happy to help, settling a pair of reading glass with a garishly beaded necklace on the bridge of her nose, berating herself for having trouble figuring out Simmons' phone but, eventually, she works it out and, just as she finishes, the quaint silence around them—the shuffling and murmuring of more and more people beginning their day—is broken by the sound of a smack, a child crying across the street, and they all look up to see a father menacing over a boy who was holding his little hands to the side of his face.

The father has a finger pointing down at him, scolding, his words muffled and snarled and the woman follows the trio's line of sight, a frown deepening on her wrinkled face.

“Don't mind them,” she says hoarsely, like this isn't the first time those two had made a scene and it wouldn't be the last, but Grant is already up and on his feet, fists curled at his sides as he barrels forward, lucky that the road isn't busy as he refuses to check and make sure nobody was coming as he marches towards the other side of the road.

He yells to get their attention and the father peers up mid-sentence, shock showing on his square features briefly, twisting swiftly into indignation.

“Oh dear,” Fitz and Simmons say together, scrambling to their feet and following Grant but keeping a fair enough distance, unsure of how out-of-hand this confrontation was going to get and, despite Fitz' bravado, neither of them were much in the way of physical fighters.

“This is none of your fucking business,” the father growls, moving his still pointed finger up and towards Grant and Grant doesn't hesitate, grabs it with his left hand and bends it just far back enough to cause pain but not enough to completely break it and the father holds in the noise of agony he wants to make, the boy's eyes wide at this spectacle, mouth open. The fist is something that Grant should have seen coming but he doesn't in the least and Fitz hears Simmons gasp, watches her recoil and he can't help flinching back himself as the hand as hefty as a brick slams into the side of Grant's head.

Grant stumbles sideways, dizzy, and, just as he regains his footing, the fist is advancing a second time, fast and just as hard, making contact with whatever part of his face it could get and Grant shakes his head to clear it, easily dodges the next one and grasps onto the man's shirt, curling his fingers tightly into the fabric and throwing him against the wall of the sporting good's store they were brawling in front of, the owner bellowing something at them from behind his counter, unheard through the glass window. By now, a crowd was beginning to gather and the boy had started wailing, uncertain of what else he was supposed to do, unable to defend his father nor lend visible support to this stranger and Fitz knows that there's no way that things aren't going to get uglier. He takes a deep breath as if preparing to dive underwater and strides over, grabbing onto Grant's arms and making an attempt to pull him away. 

Grant acts as if he's being handled by a ghost, as if nobody is there but him and this other man and Simmons steps in, puts her hands on Grant as well and yanks, both she and Fitz tugging on him in tandem until he has no choice but to give in and allow them to help him walk away. The father spits at Grant, lunges, not caring that there were other people involved, that they were making his opponent unwillingly surrender and his fist misses Grant, collides with Fitz instead, impacting against the back of his shoulder and Fitz grunts, Simmons yelps, and it's enough to reignite the waining fire under Grant, who maneuvers around Fitz to punch the father in the stomach and he doubles over, the wind knocked out of him. Grant bends over to say something to him, quiet enough that nobody else could know what it was and Simmons has a hand on Grant's back, speaking quickly, telling him they have to go, no, really, they should go and go _right now_ and, finally, the three of them make their way rapidly down the sidewalk, back to the motel.

\- -

Once inside the room, Fitz lowers himself down on the bed, Simmons sitting next to him and pulling up his shirt to inspect where he had been injured, touching the skin with the tips of her fingers, while Grant disappears into the bathroom to scrub the man's saliva off on his face, returning soon after to pace furiously over the length of the paltry space. Fitz can practically hear her heart racing, her hands shaking and she takes in a quivering breath.

“It doesn't look too severe,” she tells Fitz, touching him on the back of the head, a comforting gesture similar to the one she uses when she has to wake him up from a bad dream in the middle of the night and, for a moment, Fitz wonders if maybe none of this trip has been real and he closes his eyes, opens them again but nothing's changed. “I don't think he hit you very hard.” She breathes some more, places the back of her hand on her forehead and Fitz turns and hugs her, lets her rest her head on his chest just for a few seconds before she pulls away, nods once and then is on her feet, facing Grant who's still moving. “Let me look at you,” she says, holds out an arm to try and catch him as he passes by and he stops but won't let her touch him.

“I'm fine,” he asserts, not looking at either of them and Fitz stands, too, rolls his shoulder, wincing.

“Just let her—”

“I don't need you to—” Grant starts, his voice tinged with the possibility of wanting to shout but he pauses, reigns himself in, finally glances down at them as they stare worriedly back. “I've had worse.”

“We just want to make sure,” Simmons says and Grant sits down where Fitz had been only moments before and both Fitz and Simmons hover over him, her holding Grant's chin between two fingers as she turns his head to the side and they gingerly survey the damage. Purple and yellow bruises are already beginning to blossom along his hairline and the left side of his face, his bottom lip cut and bleeding lightly and Simmons doesn't even have to make a request, Fitz leaving briefly to wet a washcloth that none of them have used yet under cool water and Grant takes it, presses it to his mouth before either of them could do it for him.

“That was quite a display,” Simmons says as she and Fitz lower themselves on either side of Grant, their shoulders touching, hands gripping the bedspread to keep steady, the bed not quite wide enough to fit them all in a row. “Have you really had worse?”

“Yeah, I— Yes.”

“When you were in the army?” Simmons asks softly and Grant shakes his head. “Oh.”

“He deserved it,” Fitz says and Simmons looks appalled, Grant's brows furrowing with barely concealed hurt and Fitz startles when he realizes what he just said and how poorly he worded it. “Not— No, no, I meant— The father. The father deserved it. Whatever happened— I didn't mean that you—” Fitz gives up, figures that they understand what he was trying to make clear.

“Yes, well,” Simmons says, “I definitely agree with that.” She abruptly reclines her head on Grant's shoulder, sighing, and he barely reacts to it, eyes focused on the old television with a crack along the screen that's sitting on top of the old dresser across from him.

“I don't think I made that kid's situation much better,” Grant says. “But I couldn't just—”

“We know,” Simmons says. Fitz doesn't contradict him, doesn't try to tell him that everything would be fine but he doesn't say that he shouldn't have done it either, knows for a fact that, if Grant weren't there, he might have at least said something from a safe enough distance, just so his displeasure could be heard.

“We should probably go,” Grant suggests after a moment, tossing the now useless and drying washcloth onto the floor.

“I agree with that as well,” Simmons concurs, lifting her head and saluting him. “And, perhaps Fitz, we can avoid driving through this place on our way back home. I have a feeling we might not be welcome here for awhile.”


	7. The Shoshone Ice Caves Aren't Much to Look at and It's Full Price Admission at The Crater Rock Museum

The playlist that Simmons has crafted had grown exponentially since their trip began, her using their fleeting moments of downtime to add more music and, as they pass by Jackson, one of the last cities in Wyoming before Idaho, the harsh drawl of Jim Morrison telling them to keep their eyes on the road and their hands upon the wheel flows leisurely out of the car's old speakers and Simmons frowns, puzzled, inspecting her player curiously and then gazing at Fitz, who puts his hands in the air.

“Don't look at me.” That's when they hear Grant actually chuckle, just enough for them to notice, and Simmons turns to stare at him with the same expression she had on when the song started.

“In Douglas, before we went into town,” Grant explains, “While you two were taking your time with packing the car and asking the owner about breakfast. You left everything out on the table.”

Simmons exclaims, “You said you went in there to shower!”

“I take quick showers. It's one of the first things you learn how to do at training camp.”

“I can't believe it,” Simmons says.

“I know what you mean,” Fitz gripes, “I can't believe he touched my computer without asking either.”

“Oh, honestly, Fitz. I mean, yes, I know how you feel about that and I'm sure he won't do it again,” she gives Grant a pointed look, “But I think we could let it slide, just this once.”

“This is the kind of music my dad listens to,” Fitz says. “Are you secretly sixty-years-old and just look remarkably good for your age?”

“Fitz!” Simmons tries to sound like she was chastising him, but it was difficult to do as she struggles not to contain her own laughter.

“What?” Fitz says with fake innocence, as if he didn't understand what she could possibly have had a problem with and, when he looks into the rearview mirror he sees Grant staring out his window, his bruised face pressed against the chill glass and the song changes, Morrison fading into another guitar riff, Tom Petty promising that he won't back down.

\- -

Fitz drives them for another hour to an Idaho town called Saint Anthony, where he stops at a gas station to fill the tank and adjust their GPS. Simmons stays in the car but Grant gets out just to walk around and, after, Fitz is done, he gets Grant's attention, dropping the keys in his hand.

“It's three hours to our next stop,” Fitz tells him, “I need a break.”

“Sure,” Grant says. “Of course.”

Simmons looks temporarily startled when she sees Grant slide into the driver's seat next to her, Fitz willingly buckling himself into the back but it doesn't last long and she smiles as they pull back out onto the road.

\- -

The Ice Caves in Shoshone are among the blasted and wounded land, treeless and barren, a dinosaur statue with a caveman covered in thick, coarse hair riding on it their first sight as Grant parks the car in the dirt lot and Fitz and Simmons go on a rant about it that lasts far past the three-story Native American figure that kept his eyes burning onto their vehicle as they walked and right up until they reached the door to the gift shop, who's floors bowed and creaked under their feet.

Walls of postcards surround them, shelves of handmade souvenirs and just barely historically accurate tools whittled from pieces of wood and they barely take a moment to absorb it before they're being directed out the back door and down a rocky path, Fitz kicking a stone with them as they went, Simmons passing it back to him when it rolled in front of her. More statues of supposedly prehistoric people—skin shiny, hair matted—are to either side of them, posed as if any moment they would come to life and attack and, eventually, they come upon the red, lopsided shed that had been built over the entrance.

Old coats and sweaters of varying sizes hang on rusted hooks drilled into the shingles, a hand-painted sign telling them to pick one, that it was deceptively cold inside, and to return them when they leave and they spend longer than they should trying each one on, Simmons winding up with a pink puffy coat with faux-fur blooming around the edges of the hood, Fitz with a black plaid jacket with leather elbows that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and Grant with a bright yellow windbreaker with a broken zipper.

Although there are lights strung up on heavy wires, buried into the ground, the walk into the caves themselves is slightly unsettling but, once they find their footing on the walkway that was built just a few inches above the ice, railing reaching just up to their knees, everything changes. Frozen air hits them, pricks at the skin that's exposed and it's not nearly as beautiful as some of the other ice caverns that Fitz had read about. The stone walls are low, rough and curved, the ceiling dark from the bare lighting, and they walk until they reach a spot where there's more space that overlooks a larger patch of the blue illuminated swath of ice underneath them and they stop, staring around as if they expected to see something else truly remarkable.

Simmons sighs, “I was expecting more—”

“—Ice,” Fitz says. “Same. And I'm still not quite over that caveman riding that dinosaur.”

“I know! Unacceptable,” Simmons declares with disgust, her voice echoing around them.

“Although,” Fitz continues, “It does remind me somehow of Grant sitting on that rabbit statue back at that ranch in Staunton.” He yelps, hunches over when Simmons forgets about his injured shoulder and smacks him, her good humor quickly turning regretful as she clutches onto him, repeating an apology, and Fitz assures her that he's fine.

“Horrible,” Simmons says.

“We all know you were thinking it. Even Grant knows. Somebody had to say it.”

“You're going to make him regret sticking around with us, Fitz,” Simmons says, turning to Grant who had been watching the entire exchange with as much amusement as his sore face would let him show. “You're not a caveman,” she tells him.

“He's a man who enjoys classic rock and he's standing in a cave, Simmons,” Fitz says, “He's kind of a caveman.” Grant surprises them by beginning to laugh, raucous and natural, reminiscent of the first real smile he had shown them only a couple days ago and, when he stops, Simmons spontaneously reaches out to grasp Grant's hand in her own. He stiffens, stares down at his hand in hers, looks at her but she's not looking back, eyes gazing around them again as if she had no idea what she had done. Fitz notices this immediately but finds himself surprisingly unvexed by it, instead moving closer next to Grant on his other side, leaning his weight noticeably against him, reaching around behind Grant's back to hold onto a piece of Simmons' jacket, because the hand he would have grasped was otherwise occupied.

\- -

They forget to return the coats until they're almost to the back door of the gift shop and Simmons won't even consider the possibility that they just take them with them and instead collects them, leaving Fitz and Grant waiting for her as she went back down the path to hang them up.

“I've already done the calculations, and it'll take us 10 and half hours to get to Central Point, Oregon.”

“What's in Central Point?”

“The Crater Rock Museum. Our last stop,” Fitz reminds him. “You can drive the first five hours but I have to do the last five.”

“You have to?”

“I have to.”

“That's fine. We can do that,” Grant says as Fitz gives him the keys for the second time that afternoon. “I... uh... You...” Grant begins after a minute or two of shared silence.

“What?” They're distracted by Simmons and she waves and they wave back. He waits for her to get to them before continuing and, even then, it takes him a moment to get his words out as if he couldn't believe he was bringing it up.

“You guys forgot to take a photo.” It doesn't seem as if that was what he wanted to say at first, but it's an easy enough thing to mention instead and Fitz and Simmons share a look of disbelief after hearing his reminder. Simmons takes out her phone but doesn't do anything with it, peering uselessly at the wasteland around them, none of it providing a particularly elegant backdrop for a picture.

“Well, there's no point now,” Fitz says. “We might as well just buy a postcard.”

The postcard, depicting a little girl ice skating as she spouts facts about the cave, costs only a dollar and Simmons borrows a pen from the man behind the counter, signing the crisp white back, handing it off to Fitz and then Grant to do the same. Simmons admires it before tucking it into her pocket and, on their way back to the car, Fitz gives a rude gesture to the dinosaur and his human companion, beginning his rant again, Simmons joining in, and they're still going even as Grant has taken them more than an hour away from it.

\- -

As it turns out, after five hours of driving, they find that there is nothing around them or, at least, nowhere they could pause for awhile and Grant offers to keep going until they find somewhere and Fitz reluctantly lets him, sitting back with his arms crossed over his chest. Two hours later, they make it to a city called Lakeview and find a single-story motel with batter shingles and a flat roof, a middle-aged man who looked as if he was hoping the place would catch fire (or if, perhaps, his new guests would do him the favor) so he'd have an excuse to leave and never come back.

The room is the crappiest one they've been in yet: there's a mustard colored carpet and wallpaper that was ungluing in layers, revealing blinding patterns from past renovations, the frame of the bed groaning and snapping if they so much as poked it with the tips of their fingers, the pillows naked without cases, the sink in the bathroom dripping metallic smelling water, the sole window letting in a draft the whistled at them every few minutes.

Grant helps them carry their bags in but, for once, he doesn't leave, dropping his own ragged backpack on the floor, carefully kicking off his shoes, and Fitz and Simmons say nothing about it other than to share a look that was full of plenty of words on it's own, as if speaking would snap Grant out of some spell and he would realize what he was doing and decide it was a mistake. They hand over one of their pillows and they attempt to give him one of the bigger blankets but he declines, takes one of the thinner woolen ones, the fabric shabby, and says that's it's fine.

Grant sleeps on the floor and, sometime in the early morning when the sky is a dark blue, Fitz wakes up to the sound of Grant already moving around, has no idea how long he's been up for and he considers just closing his eyes, pretending he didn't notice but he realizes it's a ridiculous reaction to the situation and, instead, slides as carefully as he can away from Simmons who's still asleep (although, knowing her, it wouldn't be too long until she was up as well, inspiration for experiments or answers to formulas that had troubled her for sometimes days habitually striking her while she slept) and finds Grant sitting at a small table that's propped up in the corner of the room. He's drinking coffee that he made from a machine that was an electrical fire waiting to happen and he pours some for Fitz without him having to ask for it.

The don't talk at first but they don't need to and Fitz opens his computer, beginning to browse, to answer emails he hasn't touched since they left New York, checking the news both in the world and, more importantly, in the scientific community. He relays the highlights in a lowered voice to Grant, who asks him question only sparingly, mostly ones that required him to clarify a specific word or concept, which Fitz did grudgingly, not used to having to explain things he knew so easily to somebody.

Eventually, Simmons began to stir and, before long, the three of them were back in the car, Fitz now behind the wheel to drive them the last three hours of their trip.

\- -

They get to the museum just as it opens and the woman at the entrance who collects tickets is surprised to see visitors there already but she happily takes their money, giving them sweetly mystified glances when Fitz attempts to convince her to give Grant the senior discount.

The exhibits seem endless, room after room of minerals every color of the rainbow, formed in impossible shapes and points, geodes that looked like small caverns with layers of grey and white and glittering crystals. Fossils and the skull of a Saber Tooth Cat, it's teeth practically the length of Simmons arm, the swirl of an Ammonite, the tooth of a Megladon, are next, nestled on black velvet, placed under a sensitive, clear white light. Pottery, arrow-points and tools donated from around the world, pieces from American Indians, Scrimshaws and, finally, in the last room, a gathering of seashells, corals and animals that spent their lives under the ocean, urchins, horseshoe crabs and a zebra-striped nautilus greeting them in front of backdrops of greens and blues to match the environment they had come from.

There are other people as time passed but, for awhile, it's only them, their shoes barely audible, the only sounds coming from the click as Simmons took pictures and as she and Fitz murmured about their admiration of everything, explaining much more to Grant than any of the plaques had room for and, in the end, they find themselves back in the room with the minerals, standing in front of the case holding a rhodocrosite, a pink sort of red atop a black, white and grey stone that looked as if it had been dipped into a frozen lake until pure white ice had been left to form on it's surface.

“Excuse me,” Simmons calls the attention of one of the maroon-suited guides who was meandering around the room, prepared with comments and answers and she walks swiftly over, her long fingers clasped in front of her. “Would you mind?” Simmons holds out her phone, the camera already on, and the woman nods, a strand of red hair falling in her face and she discreetly pushes it back behind her ear as she easily accepts the device. They stand behind the rhodocrosite, Grant in the middle with Fitz and Simmons on either side and Simmons doesn't think about it, wraps an arm around Grant's waist and Fitz does the same because he almost always does and Grant still won't quite touch them, not in the way that they touch him, but he doesn't go tense either, not as badly as he has before and it barely lasts a few seconds before the woman is telling them she's done, that they looked great (even though she eyes Grant's injuries suspiciously) and that she hoped they had a good time.

Simmons buys each of them a miniature gem when they finish at the gift shop, at first considering different ones for each but deciding to purchase three identical ones, bright and smooth and, when they're officially done, they leave, hovering near the front doors.

“I can't believe that was it,” Simmons says, staring up at the museum. “It was beautiful, exactly what I had hoped but—”

“—We're already finished,” Fitz says and they're starting to stroll away from the building, discussing whether they should find somewhere to eat first or inspect the town for awhile, when they realize that Grant isn't following them and they stop, turning around to see him standing where they had left him, arms hanging at his sides and they step back towards him.

“You're not coming?” Simmons asks, brow furrowed, and Grant shrugs.

“I figured this would be it. I go any further and I'll be swimming in the ocean.”

“You don't have to, you know,” Simmons says. “Leave, that is. Leave alone.”

“This isn't that town in Indiana,” Grant says. “I'll be able to find something here.”

“Maybe you already did find something,” Fitz remarks, not sure where the words come from, unable to catch them as they tumble out of his mouth and Grant stares at him, his mouth a hard line as if he's already pushing himself to not care anymore, as if it had all been an act and that it would be simple for him to just withdraw without so much as another thought about them.

“We know that whatever you’re running from is probably right back where we’re going,” Simmons says, “But now there’s one thing that wasn’t there before.”

“And what’s that?” Grant asks softly, his voice taut as he tries to make them think he wants to be done with this conversation as quickly as possible.

“Us.” Grant says nothing for a long time after Simmons says this and she nervously clears her throat. “We don’t know if you have a place to stay but—”

“—We have a fold out couch that’s never been used,” Fitz concludes. “I don't think either of us even knows how to open it, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.”

“I can't—” Grant starts, stops, tries something else, “You don't want—” But he can't finish a sentence, his grip tightening on the strap of his backpack that he had to leave behind the counter as they explored the museum and had picked up on their way out a few minutes ago. Fitz and Simmons had said nothing about the fact that he had brought it with him at the time, assuming that he just felt more comfortable having it on his person but, now begin to understand that he had it because he had planned on disappearing the moment they looked away.

“Grant,” Simmons says, stepping closer to him, “We're your friends.” She hesitates. “We're more than your friends,” and Fitz nods in agreement.

“I have to go,” Grant mutters and, keeping his head down, he starts to briskly walk away.

\- -

Fitz takes Simmons to the first restaurant that they find, but neither of them are particularly hungry and, after quietly nibbling on a warm plate of barely dressed potato skins, they start to talk about the journey home, conversing about how much shorter it would be in comparison, planning out where and when they would stop, and it's business as usual, like it had been just the two of them the entire time, but neither of them can avoid the grey and burdensome cloud that was lingering over them as they spoke. They trek back to the car mostly in silence, passing by stores with smartly dressed mannequins in the windows, past numerous bakeries, a coffee shop, and a bookstore and Simmons comments that Grant was right, that he could definitely find something worthwhile here, but the words sound hollow and are drenched with false positivity.

Simmons chews on her bottom lip. “I really thought maybe—”

“I know.”

Their car, the silver flecked with new layers of dust and a neon yellow pamphlet tucked under one of the front wipers, is exactly where they left it and, from a distance, they can see someone sitting on the hood and Fitz goes to shout, to tell this person to get lost, that's he's really not in the mood but, as they get closer, all of his rage drains out of him and he can see Simmons grinning so wide that he's concerned that her face might split in half, even though he knows it's scientifically impossible.

“Hey,” Grant says almost sheepishly as they come to a stop in front of him. “Does that offer still stand?”

“Hmm,” Fitz considers, putting a finger to his lips, “What do you think, Simmons? Does it?”

“I suppose. Just this once,” Simmons says, bending forward to hug Grant and he awkwardly returns it, patting her arm and Fitz slaps him on the back and then props himself next to him on the hood.

“Who's driving?” Grant asks when Simmons finally lets go of him, picking up the pamphlet and barely giving it a second glance as he crumples it up and throws it in the vicinity of a trash can.

“You are,” Fitz says, dropping the keys into his hand. “I've had enough of it to last a lifetime. I'm not getting behind that wheel until at least Iowa. Or maybe Illinois.” They take their places in the car and, after Fitz has reprogrammed the GPS and Simmons has plugged in her player, Grant starts the engine, pulling out of their parking space to begin the forty-five hour drive home.


End file.
